


Wills and Wishes

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Saiunkoku Monogatari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-24
Updated: 2006-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:12:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1623656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after the new governors leave for Sa Province, Kouyuu learns of the death of a stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wills and Wishes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for cairnsy

 

 

Theoretically, the week after the new officials were assigned to their places should be a quiet one for the Department of Civil Affairs, a moment for its members to breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy lingering cups of tea and gossip, as only those in charge of personnel could gossip, in the long, slanting sun of the afternoon. Theoretically. Kouyuu glowered down at his desk - or rather, at the stacks of paper obscuring the surface of his desk from view, and entertained a brief but satisfying fantasy of boxing the Emperor about the ears the next time his majesty complained of overwork. The situation might have been an annual one, but this year's burden hadn't been helped by the Secretary of Civil Affairs being arrested in the middle of assigning placements; nearly a third of the forest infesting his desk was from pompous idiots using that excuse to moan that such and such assignments were invalid because they hadn't been personally overseen at the highest level as if he, Kouyuu, hadn't been granted full authority by Reishin-sama as Acting Secretary. Kouyuu dashed off a denial with vicious satisfaction, regretting that his calligraphy wasn't so good as to be able to convey disdain in the curve of a character, as Reishin-sama could. He shoved that complaint aside and reached for another, wistfully contemplating a far more violent fantasy for Secretary Sai - but he didn't need to imagine it, did he? Reishin-sama had already promised a fate more painful and humiliating for the fool in reality than anything that he could devise. Startled, Kouyuu realised he was smiling slightly; he made himself stop and refocus on his work, on the slow burn of annoyance it brought, and put away that memory. He tried not to think of it too often; it was too precious to be worn out with to much wear.

"Kouyuu-sama?" A voice called from the door; Kouyuu glanced up. The messenger was juggling an armful of packages and a new sheaf of papers which he brought forward at once to place on Kouyuu's desk; the messenger's attached to the Department of Civil Affairs were all well trained. "And your personal mail, Kouyuu-sama?"

"Just put it on the side," Kouyuu instructed impatiently, running his brush over his ink stone as he reached for the new stack of papers with his other hand, "I'll deal with them when I've dealt with all these idiots."

He heard the man leave even as he finished signing his signature, disposed of the document, and began flipping through his new pile of petitions from whinging, whining officials, muttering out loud to himself.

"Official unsuitable, unsuitable, conflict of personalities - do they think we're marriage brokers now?! New official isn't doing his share of the work - doesn't this person know how to motivate lazy subordinates? Discipline report from Onru already, he's beaten his record; Kandush Village's hens have stopped laying, hazing - _what?_ " Quickly Kouyuu flipped back through the papers to the petition from Kandush Village Council and read in growing disbelief and annoyance their pitiful plea for justice and mercy in the case of a member of one of the Great Families. Said noble scion had set up camp nearby and commenced playing unearthly and demonic music at all hours of the day and night, scaring their hens out of laying. And while Kouyuu had nothing but sympathy for the Kandush villagers, what the hell was this doing on his desk?! A quick check of the document's provenance record revealed that it had first been sent to the Department of Justice who had then forwarded it to one Ran Shuuei, as elder brother of the concerned. There was no record saying: `and was then slipped into Junior Secretary Li's paperwork in an attempt to pawn the whole mess off on him,' but Kouyuu had been Jougun at sixteen; he could extrapolate. And fume. "That bastard... why should I be the one to deal with his weirdo brother? What does he think I am, his personal secretary?!"

He dashed off a note that the appeal was to be returned to Ran-shogun forthwith, there to be inserted into an orifice of the messenger's choice and dropped the whole bundle onto his `out' pile with a satisfying thump. "As if he doesn't know I'm swamped with my own work, lazy bastard," he muttered vengefully."

"I hope, Kouyuu," a dry voice intruded from the door, "That you are not referring to me?"

Kouyuu jerked upright, banging his knee against his desk and knocking himself back into his chair. "No, Reishin-sama." Kouyuu smiled at him past the pounding in his knee as he forced himself to his feet again. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"Kou Changpu's concubine has just died, though from the funeral he has planned you would think it was his First Wife and all her family come to pay respects and offer consolation." Reishin snapped open his fan and rested its curve gently against his cheek, half hiding an amused smile. "He won't be getting any such from her or her family for some time after this. I need you to select a grave gift for the occasion; things are far too frantic for me to take the time it would need." Kouyuu resisted the urge to glance at his own laden desk.

"Do you have any suggestions, Reishin-sama?"

"It appears she favoured jade when she was alive."

Kouyuu froze as his heart skipped a beat. He forced himself to start breathing again. _Foolish,_ he berated himself. _Simply because a concubine favoured jade doesn't mean..._ "What was her name?" he asked as casually as he could, picking up a brush to record it.

"Cuifen."

The brush snapped in his hand. Kouyuu stared down at it blankly, unable to think past the sudden roaring in his ears. Then, slowly, he turned his head in the direction of the table on which the messenger had placed his personal mail. The personal mail he had impatiently set aside earlier in favour of the piles of administration on his desk, in the sure and certain knowledge that most of it would be meaningless notes from Shuuei who had far too little to occupy him during the day or last, desperate bribes from those unhappy with their placements. And yes there among them, half seen and then dismissed, a bamboo cylinder. Such as might be used for transporting delicate glass bottles. His limbs moved stiffly as he walked over to pick it up; he had no idea why. This didn't matter at all, did it? And even if it did... any importance it might have belonged to someone else with a different name.

A wisp of scent escaped as he unscrewed the lid, and made him swallow painfully against the familiarity of it. He drew out the moulded bottle gently. And there, tucked between the bamboo and the glass, a tiny piece of paper with a forgotten name. He crumpled it in his fist before it could make him remember.

A thoughtful noise to his left dragged him back to the present. He looked over to find that Reishin had picked up the accompanying letter and was reading through it with great interest. Kouyuu swallowed hard and clasped the bottle of perfume against his chest. He was sickeningly aware that if it were anyone but Reishin he would be tackling them to the ground and wrestling the letter from his hands. But if it were anyone but Reishin-sama, he wouldn't be feeling as if the world was ending.

"It says that among her letters were instructions to send this to you," Reishin remarked. "Now why would that be?" The look Reishin levelled at him made it clear that the question was in no way rhetorical, but that Reishin would not care either way whether it was answered or not. That look of perfect indifference was so familiar it was steadying. It made him want to speak.

 _Awkward creature,_ a voice, silenced for years, whispered through his mind, amused.

Shuuei would have probably dressed it up in elaborate language of allusions and half metaphors; Kouyuu had no patience with that, and Reishin had none with him. Still, he couldn't bring himself to look up as he spoke. "Cuifen was my mother's name."

Silence. Hardly daring, he glanced up. Reishin was watching him thoughtfully, studying him with a direct, steady gaze; Kouyuu could almost hear the pieces of a puzzle that had remained fallow for many years snapping into place.

"The perfume?"

"She blended it," Kouyuu admitted, for what was one more secret now? "She was very skilled; her blends were highly sought after." Her hands had always smelled of the perfumes she had been dealing with, a different scent each day. Her hands had been so soft.

Once, he could remember running to her after his Father's first wife had struck at him and left a long, bleeding score across his collarbone with her ring. Cuifen had clicked her tongue over it and fetched her medicine box. Kouyuu remembered sitting very still as she dabbed at it with a bit of cloth, carefully holding her long, full sleeve back with one hand to prevent any blood getting on the fine silk. A single lock of hair had escaped from its bounds as she bent her head forward and it brushed against his shoulder, like pale green jade spun into thread. He had been staring at it, Kouyuu remembered; he had always been looking at her hair, the exact same shade as his own. He'd never seen anyone else with the same colour hair as theirs'; his mother had come from somewhere far away. And if he was looking at her hair, he didn't have to look into her eyes. Like pale green jade. He had been crying, silently, and she had wiped away his tears and then -

_"Why do you keep forcing yourself on them?" she asked curiously. "If you kept your distance from your father and brothers, his lady wife would soon cease to be troubled by your existence." He kept quiet, but realisation dawned in her eyes nonetheless "Ah," Cuifen sighed, drawing him up into her arms, petting his hair absently like one would pet a puppy or any such pet. Kouyuu kept limp and quiet, resting his head against the crook of her neck, breathing in the clean, woody fragrance she wore. "Why must you be so deeply loyal? Only dogs and foils give themselves so completely, holding nothing back for themselves; and the people they give them to hold them as securely as a dog on a leash._

"Your Father's new wife hates me; I wouldn't be surprised to find my tea seasoned with poison some day soon. I think it might be time for me to leave. My beauty will last a few years more, but I will need that time to attach a new man."

"And so she left?"

"Yeah," Kouyuu said tiredly; he kept his eyes averted, unable to meet Reishin's steady, interested gaze. "Just disappeared one day. Took her silks and her jewels... all her jade." He snorted, unable to prevent the bitterness from flavouring his voice. "About the only thing of hers she didn't take was me. She didn't care enough about me to stay, or to compromise her chances by taking her with me. She would never let herself care enough about anyone to be held and influenced by them."

"Practical," Reishin murmured, and Kouyuu had to drop his eyes to hide the sudden lance of pain that hit his heart because of course Reishin-sama would agree with that; Reishin-sama was the most self-possessed, self-contained person he had ever known. It was impossible to imagine Reishin being restrained or restricted by any excessive emotional attachments..."But weak."

Kouyuu's head jerked up. "Weak?"

"Of course." Reishin regarded him with a look that said he was being a little bit stupid; a familiar one, though it never failed to make Kouyuu feel ashamed to have disappointed him. "It is an easy thing to achieve all your wishes if all you are concerned about is yourself; only shallow, spoiled fools who will never amount to anything are satisfied with that. Striving to achieve things beyond yourself is the formation of great wills and greatness." Reishin's fan snapped open and he regarded Kouyuu narrowly. "It becomes foolishness only when the one you give yourself to is unworthy; I would never be so foolish."

 _Shouka-sama,_ Kouyuu remembered, and immediately felt a fool for his previous thoughts; however impossible it was to imagine Reishin as emotionally bound to anyone, that didn't reflect reality; he _knew_ this and sometimes he even thought, maybe - _A few years ago you made fun of my adopted child calling him an abandoned child. I've had absolutely no intention of forgiving you since then._ And that was the other reason he avoided thinking of that memory too often; it made him shaky and weak. Something too long longed for and too new for him to rest against in all security. Something more important than anything.

Kouyuu looked away. "She forgot me completely. She probably never even thought of me."

"Doubtful," Reishin observed dryly. "She sent this scent to Li Kouyuu, Assistant Secretary of Civil Affairs, personal advisor to the Emperor. She knew exactly who you have become."

Kouyuu frowned. "What-"

"She did not permit any lingering threads to remain between you; she abandoned you for own advancement and refused you any advantages or help her new position might have offered," and Kouyuu had to wince, pained, to hear the facts so starkly stated. Reishin continued on, ruthless. "She cut all ties between you, and so even when she learnt of your advancement, she didn't attempt to reach back to you."

"If she had reached for me," Kouyuu whispered, "I would have helped her."

"And that, I suspect, is why she didn't." Reishin cocked his head to one side, studying him narrowly. "An honourable woman."

Kouyuu felt his mouth fall open. He couldn't even bring himself to care as he stared, wide-eyed. Of all the things he had never even dreamt of to hear praise, and such high praise, for his mother in Reishin's mouth must number the highest. He shivered, warmed. "Reishin-sama..."

"Of course, that is no guarantee of her skill," Reishin observed, and deftly snatched the bottle of scent from Kouyuu's arms before Kouyuu could do more than blink in startlement. "You would wear this out of sentiment no matter how rancid it was and disgrace us both," Reishin commented with a certain amount of malicious relish as he broke the bottle's seal. Kouyuu watched, strangely tense, as Reishin sampled the scent, because why should Reishin's opinion of her _skill_ matter to him now?

Reishin's face was very thoughtful as he offered the bottle back.

Carefully, Kouyuu accepted the bottle from Reishin and cradled it in his arms, dipped his head to breath in the scent, his eyes falling half closed. Pines and running water... He used to imagine she came from the mountains, although which range he had never been able to decide. And she had never said.

"It is not a bad scent," Reishin remarked. "I will wear it sometimes."

 _Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes._  
\- Chinese proverb

 


End file.
